Five dead in Afghan blast

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Five Afghan soldiers were killed and two wounded today when their vehicle was hit by an explosive device in an attack that Afghan officials blamed on the ousted Taliban.

According to one official, the Afghan border troops were on a routine patrol near Spin Boldak, a dusty town on the border with Pakistan, when one of three vehicles they were travelling in hit a landmine.

But Razziq Khan, border police chief in the area, said the convoy was hit by a remote-controlled bomb.

"It was done by the Taliban," Khan said. No arrests had been made, he said.

In a separate incident, two US troops and three Afghan interpreters were slightly wounded when at least seven rocket-propelled grenades were fired at a US position in the eastern province of Paktika yesterday, the US military said.

Lieutenant-Colonel Tucker Mansager, US military spokesman in Kabul, said at least two of the grenades hit inside the base.

Afghanistan's southern and eastern provinces have seen a rising number of bloody clashes between Taliban guerrillas and US-led and Afghan government forces.

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US-led forces ousted the hardline Islamic Taliban regime late in 2001 in a bid to destroy the al-Qaeda network blamed for hijacked plane attacks on the United States in September of that year.

The Taliban and their Islamic militant allies, including al-Qaeda, have declared a holy war against US-led forces in Afghanistan, and the guerrillas have vowed to disrupt elections planned for September.

More than 800 people have been killed in violence since early August, when the level of attacks blamed on militants began to rise noticeably.

In recent violence, Afghan soldiers beheaded four Taliban fighters after guerrillas cut off the heads of an Afghan interpreter for US-led forces and an Afghan soldier this week in southern Zabul province.